Generally an ink jet printer is a kind of serial printer printing sequentially, where a maximum printing width of a line is pre-set according to a print media. And the serial printer calculates a maximum number of printing dots corresponding to a maximum printing width of a print media. At this time, the serial printer performs the following two operations in case of a number of printing dots to be printed exceeds the maximum number of printing dots. Firstly, it performs line feed and prints the printing data not being printed because of exceeding the maximum printing width after finishing the line feed, and or it cancels the printing data not being printed.
Therefore the printed image is different from a user's edited image as the printing data exceeding the maximum printing width is printed in the next line or canceled. The inconvenience is solved by printing a reduced image without changing the picture image in case of exceeding the maximum printing width in a kind of serial printer such as a printer, model BJ-33 made by Canon. In the case, the size of printing data transferred to the serial printer is reduced by operating a paper form converting function key. For example, the size of printing data from a host computer is reduced by ratio of A3 to B4 in case of operating the function key of converting A3 paper form to B4 paper form. So the serial printer has the inconvenience for setting the printing width manually in advance by using the paper form converting function key by a user's recognition.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,647,189 for an Electrophotographic Copying Machine With Variable Magnification to Fujiwara discloses calculating the variable magnification ratio based upon both automatically sensing the copy document size information and manually inputting copy document size information when copying unformatted sized documents onto standard size copy paper. U.S. Pat. No. 4,789,879 for a Copier For Composite Copying With Automatic Magnification Adjusting Means to Murakami discloses a copier device for automatically correcting the magnification according to the change in the size of the copy paper caused by the proceeding copying process.
I have not seen a printer that determines the maximum print width of the original and uses that value to calculate the reduction ratio. I have also not seen the above used in combination with using an optical sensor to determine the width of the print media for calculating the reduction ratio.